Our children deserve better than a teacher trained at home
It's great to be back to the good old days when you could buy your way into nearly any job in this country. We now have a situation where a private company will 'train' our primary teachers, mostly online, and all of the reports commissioned by governments over the years in relation to teacher training will be scrapped. In teaching, where communication and relationships are paramount, all the work now being done in the training colleges and at the school-based training level will be lost.
So much for all of the talk about the need for teacher-training students to engage in:
1 Collaborative planning
2 training to develop appropriate effective personal, interpersonal and social skills
3 participative "work and/or study" on developing their philosophy of teaching/learning
4 ongoing debate and reflection on their own attitudes to education and to those with whom they work (pupils, parents, boards, external agencies etc)
5 strategic planning to utilise skills to the maximum.
All of the above would now appear to have gone by the board and the good training practices which now prevail will be discarded.
However, the Government knows best and, in their wisdom, has sanctioned this new form of teacher-training.
The authorities no longer recognise that student teachers' philosophies of education and attitudes to education of those pupils with whom they will eventually work need to be worked on in a real-living and communicative environment. This will not be possible in an online situation.
The Government seems to think that effective communication, collaboration and co-operative working, training and planning, and student-teachers working with people in a real training situation, are all unnecessary.
They might be okay in theory, but economics demands otherwise.
I presume the idea is that the students will pick up all these skills as they go along, hear about them online or read a few books which will fill them in. I would suggest that they drop the online element and just give out a few booklists.
The end result will be the same.
I am also amazed at how difficult it is to get information about this initiative. Who are the tutors? What experience have they in working with 'real live students' at this level and how will the quality of teaching and learning be guaranteed? Who designed and vetted the programme, and who vetted the tutors? Why have the training colleges, which offer much better participative training modules, been ignored?
My apologies I forgot that this is an economic initiative and has little to do with the real education of our children. The country needs 'trained' teachers, so get them on to the treadmill as quickly and as cheaply as possible.
This short-term and short-sighted strategy will have long-term detrimental effects on the education system, and our children will suffer.
I hope to retire from teaching next year. I've worked as principal in five different types of schools in rural and urban areas. So, the initiative will not affect me personally.
Hundreds of student teachers have worked in my schools, and even during the past ten years or so the more communicative, reflective and participative type of training which they get is producing better teachers.
It saddens me that we are lowering standards for our future teachers. In our schools we have always willingly and voluntarily collaborated with the training colleges and the students in the training of student teachers. Will this goodwill continue to be given?
As private companies take over and school managements have to pick up the pieces, will teachers now demand payment for involving themselves in this extra work? It's highly likely, and why not?
We urgently need a national debate involving all of the partners in education. This initiative, which was sprung on all of us, is not the way to get the best out of the educational system.
If there are faults in the present system we are all open to look at them and remedy them.
But this initiative is divisive, ill-conceived and miles away from the openness and transparency which should be there.
From one teacher who is heading off to grass... children, teachers, parents deserve better.
David Fitzgerald,
Ardshiel,
Lower Glenageary Road,
Dun Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.
